Date: Mon, 26 May 1997 06:56:02 -0600 (MDT)
Message-Id: <1.5.4.16.19970526085536.0def3624@pop.uvm.edu>
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To: socgrad@csf.colorado.edu
From: TR Young <TR.Young@uvm.edu>
Subject: Teaching Criminology: Part VI: Political Crime
Cc: TEACHSOC@maple.lemoyne.edu
A. Political crime seldom appears in crim texts.  Intro texts
        and social problems texts make mention of genocide but
        mostly descriptive/exemplary cases are given.  In this
        outline of a postmodern criminology, I would like to 
        define and list the forms of political crime.

        Most of what appears in this section and prior discourse
        on postmodern criminology presumes some substantive
        definition of crime grounded upon a very different social
        philosophy than is ordinarily the case...I will go on
        to this more affirmative approach to postmodern sensibility
        in the next series of lectures...which will appear on the
        Red Feather Institute Home Page---with but a paragraph
        abstract posted on socgrad as promised last Fall.

B. Definition: Political crime is that use of power to reproduce
        structures of domination.  there are five major structures 
        which inform/fuel most of the political crime in the 21st
        century;

        1.  Patriarchy          2.  Racism      3. National Chauvinism  
                4.  Class exploitation/alienation       5. Ageism

        Notice I did not mention inequality as do most radical crimin-
        ologists.  I think that some inequality may well be helpful to the
        human estate; I accept the notion of necessary repression and
        as with Marcuse, prefer to speak of surplus repression in the
        use of power inequalities.

        IN the final part of this series, I will lay out a philosophy of
        science/knowledge which I use to ground affirmative postmodern
        criminology....in it, there is the notion of a bifurcation of
        key variables which tend to create new magnitudes and new forms
        of crime.  It is the point at which inequality [as one such
        key variable] bifurcates that we should be looking for rather
        than inequality per se.

C.  Forms of power.  I use four forms of power with which to sort out
        political crime:

        1. Social power...that power to shape the behavior of others who
                occupy/share status-roles.  Social power is essential to
                all social life.  And power differentials are essential
                to all socialization and all 'necessary' repression.

                However, some uses of social power are oriented to surplus
                repression...to exploitation...to degradation of the human
                project.  When social power is thus used, political crime
                takes substantive form.

        2. Moral power.  Even without specific social relationships, we can
                shape the behavior of unknown others by recourse to moral
                power.

                I define moral power as that response to the moral structure
                to which people are socialized.  Usually moral systems have
                a religious grounding.  Even so, given moral systems are, in
                part, criminal.  Patriarchy is a moral system in which women
                are subordinated and in which men arrogate social power to
                male domination.

                Many religions support, in part, criminality.  Those which
                permit believers to exploit other peoples; to repress other
                religious forms; to gloss racism, sexist preferences, slavery
                and economic exploitation take on a criminality not well 
                registered in most crim texts/theories.

        3. Economic power.  Those who control access to real or acquired needs
                have great power to shape the behavior of others.  In our time,
                economic power is registered in currencies but there are many
                non-market goods and services which can be used to coerce people
                to demean and degrade themselves and others.

                Much of the crime in class inequality comes about through the
                deployment of wealth in such a way to reproduce structures of
                domination.

                I want to make it clear that capitalism, per se, does not fuel
                economic crime...market systems, investment schemes, economic
                inequality could be harnessed to larger social purpose than is
                now the case in the 20th century but one should not confuse 
                between economic inequality per se and the degrading uses of
                inequality itself.

       4. Physical power.  I disagree that all power reduces to physical power;
                indeed, my view is that legitimacy, social peace and domestic
                tranquility derives more from social justice and egalitarian
                norms than gun-powder, coercion or battering.

                Physical power can, indeed, generate short-term compliance and
                reluctant co-operation but the social process, requiring belief,
                trust, faith and compassion is hostile to the tenure of coercive
                systems.

                Then too, those at the bottom of stratification systems; class,
                race, gender and ethnic...retain physical power as a last resort
                to social emancipation.  

                Much street crime can be understood in these terms; middle class
                and/or dominant groups have social, moral and economic power
with
                which to meet desire and demand.  Those in the underclass retain
                physical power and more often then not, deploy it in
pre-theoretic
                ways...in ways we call street crime.  That middle class
people don't
                commit robbery, burglary, mug or rape people does not yield
moral
                superiority when they abuse trust to embezzle, defraud, exploit
                or coerce.

                It is true that high-tech systems of power--military power in
                particular are a problem to the powerless...but even in the most
                racist, ethno-centric systems, there are people who
criticize the
                deployment/alienation of all forms of power.

D. Forms of Political Crime.  I usually make distinction between privatized
political
        crime and institutionalized political crime.  Rape is an example of
the first
        while warfare exemplar of the second.

        Personalized Political Crime: Assault, rape, battering, beating,
mugging,
                robbery, extortion, murder and threat of violence generally.

        Institutional political crime: racism, sexism, religious bigotry;
elitist
        forms of governance, of work, of education and of communications.
        
        Elitist forms of art, science, music, drama, dance, cinema, play, poetry
        and literature generally are political crime when other, different forms
        of culture are denigrated, discouraged and/or ranked using putatively
        universal norms and standards.

        warfare deserves special attention in affirmative postmodern
criminology.  I
        identify six waves/forms of warfare which interact and overlap in human
        history...most devoted to exploitation of wealth and/or imposition of
        honorific stratifications:

        1. Predatory warfare: from the raiding parties of clan and tribe to the
                periodic excursions into gang warfare, predatory crime reaches
                across history and bursts out in putatively modern societies.
        2. Wars of Feudal Conquest: periodic predation converts into feudal
domin-
\               ation when some part of a victorious army is left behind to
extract
                feudal taxes and labor.
        3. Wars of Commercial Colonialism: Core countries send armies to far
away
                places to guarantee access to land, resources, markets and
labor.
        4. Wars of Capitalist Rebellion: from the time of Cromwell in 1640
to the
                German revolution in 1840, capitalists join with peasants to
over-
                throw feudalities.
        5. Wars of Colonial Liberation: From the American Revolution to the
present,
                wars against colonial/capitalist core countries have marked
the last
                two hundred years or so.
        6. Wars of Socialist 'liberation:'  From the October Revolution in
Russia to
                the victory last week in Zaire/Congo, marxist/socialist
revolutionaries
                have sought state power in order to change relations of
production.
        
E. Most crim texts ignore most political crime; especially warfare leaving it to
        political science and to history texts.  

   Most theories of crime focus upon low-level psychological
variables/orientations.

   Addition of political crime to the inventory/content of crim texts would
require
        major revisions/upgrades of theory.

   

Conclusion: More people die in warfare than any other form of crime; more
property
        is vandalized; more wealth stolen in warfare than in all other forms of
        crime combined.  Why it is ignored by most criminologists is
testimony to
        the ideological flaws and defaults in American Criminology inherited
from
        socio-biology, physiology, reductionist psychology and depoliticized
social
        psychology.

        A major task for postmodern crim in the 21st century is to add
content and 
        theory to the discipline.
                                        
        Next and last, a postmodern criminology grounded upon the new
sciences of
        chaos/complexity.
                                                                        TR Young
TR Young
The Red Feather Institute
8085 Essex, Weidman, Mi.,
  48893  [517] 644 3089